IS SKIPPING SENIOR YEAR A GOOD IDEA?
The New York Times asks – is senior year worthwhile? Suggesting that for the ”soberest and most studious” it’s a redundancy and for those headed directly into the labor force it’s like a year in detention, Walter Kirn suggests that twelfth grade is a “fidgety waiting period that begs for descents into debauchery and concludes in a big dumb party.” In a more constructive plan, the Gates Foundation is behind an initiative to help certain students go from 10th grade to community college, not to save money but time – an approach dubbed “move on when ready.”
While not wholly opposed to that approach, I think it misses the mark by ignoring the significance of senior year as a developmental event , the transition from adolescent to young adult. While some teenagers may be ready to move on intellectually or even vocationally at 16 or 17, few are capable of the other tasks of the young adult transition – differentiating from the family system, leaving home, exploring identity alternatives, developing self-discipline, and managing time, money, commitments and responsibilities. Even if the senior year of high school is just “a holding pattern,”, it’s the right place to be at the right time for most teenagers, who, despite their demands for more independence, are also already experiencing separation anxiety about leaving home. All through adulthood they will struggle as we all do to balance their needs for autonomy with their needs for closeness and connection – senior year is when they take the first step on that narrow wire.
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And according to this article, I totally agree with your opinion, but only this time!
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